从本质到共相--伊格尔顿在《文学事件》中的视角演变

摘要

Terry Eagleton has kept a watchful eye on the essential issue these years. In The Event of Literature published 2012, Eagleton discussed the essence of literature issue by virtue of a term Universals of scholasticism in the Middle Ages., and gave literature an essential definition with an anti-essential thought. Eagleton holds that literature has its essential attribution on the realism position and meanwhile, he holds that literature is an specific nominalism. He insists that the reason of essential and anti-essential minds of literature both exist, due to the double position that different people adhere to realism and nominalism. If we agree that literature has its very definition, we stand on the radical realism point;and if literature hasn’t its essence, we stand on the radical nominalism.%特里·伊格尔顿一直关注着文学的本质问题，在2012年出版的《文学事件》一书中，他借中世纪经院哲学中一个常见的术语“共相”深入探讨了“文学的本质”这个宏大问题，并由此对文学进行了一种“反本质主义”式的“本质主义”界定。在他看来，关于文学的本质主义界说和反本质主义界说之所以同时存在，是因为人们各自站在实在论和唯名论的立场上去理解文学：非要为文学找本质、下定义，是一种极端实在论的观点；而非要认为文学没有本质，则是一种极端唯名论的观点。